


Thanatophobia

by AshsHorrorShow



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Gen, Horror, Introspection, Phobias, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 02:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16337753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshsHorrorShow/pseuds/AshsHorrorShow
Summary: No matter how hard one tries, no one can avoid death forever.





	Thanatophobia

**Author's Note:**

> Thanatophobia: An intense fear of death

The man had never seen Death in person, and he intended to keep it that way. He had always lived life safely. He was never a risk-taker. The worst and riskiest things he did on a constant basis was indulge in the occasional fast food stop or drive with less than safe drivers on the road. However, according to one of his friends, she _had_ gotten to see Death... kind of anyway. Apparently, when she had been a teenager, she had drowned after falling off her surfboard at a beach, hitting her head on it when she slipped, and falling unconscious in the water. Thankfully, she had been saved and brought back to life, when a lifeguard retrieved her from the water and the EMTs zapped her heart back into beating again with defibrillators. 

According to her, the doctors had later told her that she had been officially, clinically dead for a minute or so. And according to her it was quite the experience. She said for a while, everything was just completely pitch black. Everything felt cold and still. She wasn’t even afraid or wondering where the hell she was. It was like her brain wasn’t even functioning. She was just alone in the darkness, letting it envelop her, seemingly content with not moving. But then she said, after who knows how long, she suddenly felt a pull deep within her to move forward, which she soon did. She didn’t know why she was doing so or where she was going, nor did she seem to care. Once again, her mind was completely blank. She had described it as being like a robot. She had no emotions, no thoughts inside her head, just a motivation to complete a task that had been assigned to her. 

She couldn’t see where she was going, as it was still pitch black everywhere, but she had no worries about bumping or tripping on anything. It was like her body implicitly knew where to go.

Eventually, after lord knows how much walking, she suddenly heard something. She said it was hard to describe. A part of her, the more artsy part of her, as she claimed, wanted to say it was a song of sorts. But another part of her said it almost sounded like a strange humming or whistling sound being carried in the wind. And the more she moved, the closer she got. And the louder the noise got… the more a feeling began to surface within her. That feeling being desire. 

A desire so intense that all she wanted was to find the source of the sound. She said she had started walking faster to the sound, her palms sweating, her heart pounding in her chest (which seemed ironic since she was supposedly dead). She said she felt euphoric and happy and excited, like the thing she wanted most in life was right there in front of her. 

As she moved, the sound grew louder and louder, drawing her nearer and nearer until she eventually saw a bright light. She said once she saw the light, her need to run stopped and once again, she approached cautiously, lured by the sudden sight of something other than darkness. And silhouetted against the darkness, she saw a shapeless blob of a figure standing there. The figure had no real form. She could never be able to guess what gender it was. According to her, its body moved in a way the wax in a lava lamp did… its shape morphing and distorting and breaking apart only to mold back together. 

She had said when she realized the figure was there, she had paused, watching it almost hypnotically. She wasn’t scared nor felt the desire to run, despite how nonhuman this creature seemed. She continued to stare wide-eyed and blank at it, until suddenly, it held out what looked to be a thin, bony hand out to her, obviously beckoning her to come forward. 

She obediently, without any question, did so, drawn by it all. She said at the time, she found the sight of the figure almost beautiful in a way and the hand made it seem more human to her. She approached closer and closer and reached out to grab its hand, which stayed in form the whole time, even with the rest of its body shifting like a slow moving flame. When she grasped its hand, an icy coldness came over her whole body, as if she had had ice water dumped over her body, but she didn’t shiver or pull away or move. Instead, her eyes remained locked onto the figure’s inky black darkness… 

And according to her, that’s all she did for a while. Neither of them moved (other than the one’s body still contorting), she just held held its hand and stared into the amorphous black darkness in silence, her thoughts silenced and her emotions flatlined. She said eventually though, the longer she stared, images seemed to appear in the darkness. For a while, they only appeared for a flicker of a second, to the point where she almost thought she imagined them. Hundreds of wide, blood- red eyes with large pupils staring at her before disappearing. The features of a bunch of corpses. Dead, shriveled brown plants. Then she saw faces of people she knew. She could hear the sounds of her laughing as a child, the sound of her dog, and more. And just like that, a pleasant and warm sensation came over her again as she remembered her life, lost in pure nostalgia. 

She said it felt like she was completely separate from her body at that point, she was so enveloped in a feeling of overwhelming pleasure and happiness. She couldn’t have moved, even if she wanted to, which she didn't.. Not even when the scary images forming in the darkness of the figure became more prominent and lasted longer… not even when all of a sudden, a skull of a creature she didn’t know slowly but surely emerged from it. The hollows of its eyes were black and void of anything resembling emotion and sharp, deadly-looking antlers protruding from its head. As it slowly moved closer and closer, its jaws began opening wide, it’s razor sharp teeth serrated and deadly. A cruel grin seemed to be on its face. She didn’t feel any desire to move as it moved slowly over her head, clearly preparing to bite down and snack. It was like a fish being trapped by an angler fish, too hypnotized to do anything but sit there and allow itself to be gobbled down. 

And she was sure that the figure was literally seconds from snapping off her head, when suddenly, it felt like a tornado was sucking her back. She said the figure suddenly vanished just like that, her pleasant euphoria went away with a snap, and she was suddenly pulled back until finally, she awoke in an ambulance, a bunch of doctors staring down at her until she passed out again from the anesthetics they gave her. But she was dead set that what she had seen then was Death itself and that is who you really saw when you died. And she did not know if she wanted to see the aftermath of what happened had it managed to decapitate her. 

An interesting tale, to say the least. And to be honest, he didn’t know whether or not he believed it. This friend of his tended to be a rather… creative person. For all he knew, this was just something her subconscious had managed to come up with. It’s last presentation before her brain finally cut off completely. A fever dream that just happened to have good timing.

But even though he held some doubts about the validity of this claim, the story stuck with him nonetheless. Maybe that was because he had always had a slight fear of death. Not that that was abnormal. He was sure everyone, in some way, was afraid of death. That was just a natural built survival instinct placed in all creatures. However, his went a little further than most. 

When he was younger and he learned how full of danger the world was, he had become somewhat obsessed with the idea of death and the terror it brought along with it. Constantly, as a kid, he was irrationally worried about his house suddenly catching ablaze with him being trapped inside of it, only for his body to later be discovered burnt to a black crisp. Then it soon morphed to a fear of heights, of falling and snapping his neck. Then it was of a wild animal like a bear discovering him and tearing into him like he’d seen them do with deer on the nature documentaries.

As he got older, naturally these fears subsided a bit, as rationale began to take hold. But he had always been somewhat affected. He never took a risk he didn’t have to take. He was always looking up online on the potential dangers of a scenario, and doing anything in his power to avoid it. He was always very careful.

But the thing about a fear of death was that it was inescapable. There were a lot of fears out there… but they all could be avoided somewhat. If one feared dogs, they could just make a conscious effort not to surround themselves near dogs or allow themselves to get in close proximity. But death was not the same. Death was unavoidable. It didn’t matter how good or bad you were, how safe you played it in life, what you did. Eventually, Death would come for you and the ones you loved and it was just something you were forced to accept. Your life was constantly on an invisible timer you couldn’t see, and you just had to try and live life and not think about it. It felt unfair in a way.

And his friend’s story made him feel a different way about it too. The way she described it made Death sound like a predator almost, calculated and threatening. But unlike most predators, no living creature could hope to hide from it. Death was everywhere. Sure, you could protect yourself from it slightly, but no one could fully avoid being in its line of sight at all times… and whether they continued living or not all depended on when it decided to strike.

He did his best to play it safe, but there were things even he couldn’t predict or avoid. If someone went off the road and smashed into him with his car, there wasn’t much he could do. Someone could come up and shoot him. A piece of equipment could fall and crush him like a bug. Like he said, death was everywhere. 

And once his mind went on that line of thought, death suddenly was hard not to think about or see everywhere. Traces of death littered everywhere. A dead, rotting tree that was in the park. A dead animal lying on the side of the road. Pictures of relatives of his who were long since dead and buried, nothing but skeletons underground for the worms to slide in and out of. The thought made him sick. All of these omens from death, showing that Death was always nearby and that his or anyone else’s time could come next.

He, his loved ones, his enemies, strangers he met… no one was safe. 

When he saw a knife, he thought of how easy one could kill themselves or someone else with it. When he saw a tree, he thought of how it could fall and gore somebody. When he saw a building, he thought of someone falling. When he watched the news, all he could see were the reports of all the death happening in the world. 

Oh, how fragile a human life truly was!

When he curled up and tried to fall asleep, sometimes he swore he could feel the phantom of something cold touching his neck or piercing eyes boring down on him. 

And he could do absolutely nothing about it except hope… hope that once again, death would decide to spare him. To let him live on. That he had time on his ticking clock.

Every day he got to continue to breathe was a relief to him. But whenever he saw a hearse passing by or attended a funeral, he swore he could feel an icy cold touch teasing at his fingers, or hot breath hitting his neck, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. 

And all he could do was hope was that he was not next.

**Author's Note:**

>  _"Don't ever laugh as a hearse goes by,_  
>  _For you may be the next to die."_  
>  \- The Hearse Song by Harley Poe
> 
> This is by no means my best work, and to be honest, I am not huge on this. However, I've wanted to write original fiction for a while now, but I get so hung up on making it good and perfect that I never actually complete any of them. So I decided to do a test where I just typed nonstop until I came up with something and to post it... and then look back and work on improvements in the future then. Also sorry my Death isn't that original, but eh. 
> 
> As always, critique is wanted, and if you see a mistake, feel free to point it out and I will fix immediately. 
> 
> And since I've been thinking a lot about death lately, I decided to do something tackling death. By the way, sorry the Death character isn't more original but eh.


End file.
